Dark Days | Book 8 | Avalon

by Lukens, Mark

  “It’s true,” Gerald said. “It’s true that we never found any bacterial or viral infections to explain the Ripper Plague. No rogue prions, like Mad Cow Disease would show. No pathogens of any kind. All toxin reports came back clean.”

  “So you don’t have an explanation?”

  “Not exactly. We did finally find something strange, though.”

  “What?”

  “The Ripper Plague is some kind of genetic manipulation.”

  “Genetic manipulation?” Josh asked.

  “There have been significant changes to the genetic codes of all rippers we tested. Every one of them.”

  “How?” Ray asked. “What kind of manipulations?”

  “We don’t know how. It seems like the genes in the rippers just switched off, with a few others from what is called Junk DNA switching on.”

  “Junk DNA?” Mike asked. He almost sounded suspicious of the phrase, but he was smirking at the same time.

  “Every animal has a genetic code,” Gerald explained, talking faster now, looking at each one of them one at a time, from one to the next as he spoke. “From the smallest lifeforms up to us. In the simpler lifeforms we know what each gene does. This one for growth, this one for digestion, and on and on. As lifeforms get more complex, there are sequences of genes that have no known function, seemingly random sets of genes or redundancies. When we get up to primates, and especially humans, there is quite a bit of this junk DNA, and we’ve never known what it does, what it’s there for. It’s almost like a blank slate waiting to be programmed, waiting to be evolved.”

  “So almost every human on earth had their DNA manipulated all at the same time?” Ray asked.

  “Well, within a few weeks. It started with a few cases here and there, but they were all over the world, people turning into rippers and we couldn’t figure out how they were getting infected, and then we knew a little later that they weren’t getting infected because there was no infection. Then it grew exponentially over the next few weeks. Two became four, four became eight, and eight became sixteen. Then thirty-two. Sixty-four. And on and on until almost everyone had turned. In these rippers, it seems that many of the genes that make us human and not animals, the genes that distinguish us from other animals, were turned off.”

  Josh remembered Isaac having similar theories, some of them written down in the notebook that he’d lost at the cabin.

  “You know, it’s kind of funny,” Gerald said, but he wasn’t laughing or even smiling. Nothing about this seemed remotely funny. “We’ve been looking for evidence of a missing link, the link between humans and apes, the being between the two, a being not totally ape but not totally human. And I think we’ve found it. The rippers. That’s what apes evolved into. And that’s what we have evolved from.”

  “But why would we go back to that?” Josh asked. “Turn back into . . . rippers.”

  Gerald shrugged. “You mean, why devolve? That’s the question, isn’t it? We were all animals on this planet. For billions of years there were dinosaurs, fish, birds, mammals. And then, rather recently, primates. And then, seemingly overnight in cosmic terms, we evolved from apes so quickly. Why? It was like genes inside of us just flipped on, and maybe some others flipped off.”

  “Like the rippers,” Ray said. “But you don’t know why?”

  “I have a theory. A few of my colleagues had shared my theory.”

  They waited for Gerald to continue.

  “It’s like there’s this clock inside of our genetic makeup. After we evolved, after genes were manipulated, or flipped on if you want to think of it that way, I believe a clock started. Humans were given a certain amount of time, let’s say a million years. Or half a million years.”

  “Half a million years for what?” Ray asked.

  “Maybe to get to a certain point. Maybe to get to where we could manipulate our own DNA, or our environment, the very molecules around us. We were given plenty of time to get there. And when that time ran out . . .” He shrugged his shoulders and frowned.

  “Time ran out and we turned back into the missing links we used to be,” Ray said. “The rippers? That’s what you’re trying to say?”

  “Maybe,” Gerald said.

  “By who?” Josh asked. “It seems like you’re saying somebody manipulated our DNA. Somebody gave us a timeline to get to that point.”

  “Who knows?” Gerald answered. “Maybe someone did. A creator. A god. Aliens. A conscious universe. A force, like in Star Wars, or a life force that runs through everything, like chi. Whatever you believe in. This might be the way higher lifeforms evolve all over the universe, a program built into the design, a certain time to get things right or poof, back to what you once were.”

  Josh sat back in his chair, exhaling slowly. He felt Emma touch his hand, grabbing onto it, holding it. He put his arm around her, pulling her closer to him. She seemed like she was cold. Maybe she was just scared, or even in awe like he was.

  “And we should have gotten things right,” Gerald said, once again, talking faster, suddenly angry. “We had plenty of time. But we were too busy fighting each other, enslaving each other, killing each other, controlling the masses. The Dark Ages set us back. It took a thousand years just to get back to what the Greeks had known before Christ was born: they knew the world was round, that matter was made up of atoms, water displacement, complex math, written language. Think of where we would be right now if we could have come together as a species and worked together for a common good, ignoring racial differences, national differences, tribalism, classism. Think of what we could have accomplished if we would have pooled our resources together from different parts of the world, all of those discoveries and knowledge shared.”

  Gerald paused, shaking his head. He looked sad and alone, a man burdened with the darkness of the world. “Yes, we had plenty of time to get to that point where we controlled our own biological processes: aging, disease, death. Even the climate and celestial events. I believe we could have gotten to all those answers in the time given to us, but we failed. Maybe we got close: space travel, simple manipulation of genes, combating disease, but we should have gotten there sooner.”

  “Aliens,” Josh muttered. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  Gerald shook his head. “Not in the sense that you think of them, gray beings with big eyes and big heads flying around in spaceships. Much more amorphous than that, much more complex, beings that we can’t even begin to understand. Gods to us. Maybe they’ve set up these experiments, if you will, on millions of planets throughout the galaxy, maybe checking in every ten thousand years or so, maybe tweaking here or nudging there, but mostly staying out of it, giving us the chance to make our own mistakes.”

  “Or maybe we got too close, but not close enough,” Ray said. “Maybe we got too dangerous and they shut us down.”

  Gerald shrugged. “It’s possible. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we got to the point where we were about to alter DNA the wrong way and completely throw off the plan. Maybe we were getting too close to destroying our own earth. Maybe we were getting too close to colonizing the solar system and we were still too violent to be allowed to do that. Maybe we got close, but took a wrong turn along the way, and they shut us down. Or maybe the time limit is a protection for when a species gets too advanced, when they get too vain and think they are gods, too smart for our own good, destroying our own environment. Maybe they can’t let us escape the Earth and infect other planets and ecosystems with what we’ve done to our own.”

  “And now what?” Josh asked.

  “Maybe it starts all over again,” Gerald said.

  CHAPTER 45

  Ray

  “What do you mean, starts over?” Ray asked.

  “Maybe, like I said earlier, the genes automatically shut off when we get a little too smart for our own good. And then we evolve again, and it starts all over again. Maybe it’s a cycle, like the orbit of the planets around a sun. Maybe the rippers that survive the next hundr
ed thousand years evolve slowly over time. They discover fire. They make tools and weapons. They domesticate animals and then learn to farm. They learn to build, to forge steel, to cure diseases. They build ships, and then factories. And then, when they get too close to the stars, the genes turn off and it starts all over again.”

  The idea of it depressed the hell out of Ray. “That . . . that can’t be right. That can’t be true.”

  Gerald got to his feet. “I’d like to show you something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s in the computer room. It’s . . . it’s kind of like evidence.”

  Gerald began walking toward the door that led out to the hallway, not waiting for them to follow him.

  Ray got up. He and the others followed Gerald out of the dining hall and down the main hallway, back toward the lobby where the elevator was. He stopped at the locked door closest to the lobby and swiped his keycard from his pocket across the black screen next to the door. A green light lit up and the doorhandle made a loud clicking sound. As Gerald entered the room, the lights turned on. They were in some kind of computer room. Gerald sat down at one of the computer terminals, booting up the computer screen. He clicked a few of the keys, searched for a moment through files with the mouse on the desk, then he clicked on what he wanted, pulling up an image on the computer monitor.

  “What is that?” Josh asked, peering a little closer at the computer screen.

  Gerald moved out of the way so everyone could see. “It’s a hammer found in Texas in the 1930s. But the hammer has been dated to be at least a million years old. Possibly quite a bit older than that.”

  Ray stared at Gerald. “So you’re saying that hammer is proof this has happened before, this cycle thing you’re talking about?”

  “Yes. But there’s a lot more. There are plenty of artifacts around the world that prove our civilization is much older than most scientists and historians believe. The primitive computer found off the shores of Greece. The ancient map of the world that detailed coastlines of the continents long before we should have been sailing the seas. There were the artifacts found in a Turkish cave, objects that they couldn’t have made with primitive technology, but the aging on the tools proves they are well over a million years old.”

  “So you’re saying that humans, and advanced technology, have existed before here on Earth. Before we were here?”

  “Yes,” Gerald said. “It seems that way. The evidence suggests that it has happened many times in the past. A civilization rises up, then fails, the people become extinct. But not exactly extinct. Just starting over.”

  “Why didn’t we ever hear about this?” Josh asked.

  Gerald shrugged and frowned. “It got buried. Like a lot of scientific discoveries that didn’t fit the narrative at the time—they get buried, or labeled as crackpot theories.”

  Ray shook his head. This was getting too crazy for him. He needed to focus back on what was happening now. “Okay, so you were saying the rippers’ genes were manipulated.”

  “I’m saying the program was already there inside of us, buried in every one of us,” Gerald corrected.

  “Okay. But why aren’t we rippers? All of us standing here?”

  “Who knows? Maybe we will still turn into rippers. The plague started rather slowly and then sped up. Maybe it’s just taking time for the last of us to turn.”

  Ray didn’t think Gerald believed that. He waited for another answer from Gerald.

  “Maybe the designers of this program had their reasons for sparing a few of us,” Gerald said. “Maybe it’s a last chance for us. Like Noah and his family, a chance to start over, to get things right this time. To learn from our mistakes.” He shrugged again. “Maybe we’ll never understand the designers’ motivations. We’re like a dog trying to read a newspaper. No matter how long we stare at the print, we’ll never understand it.”

  Ray wondered if they had been changed in some way, if genes inside of them had been turned on. He thought of Emma’s abilities. The Dragon’s abilities. Even he and the others seemed to share some of the same dreams. But he wasn’t going to talk about that with Gerald just yet.

  “If that’s true,” Josh said, “if we’re getting one last chance at this, then I think we’re already royally screwing it up. If the lesson is to work together, we’re already failing.”

  Ray nodded. “Josh is right. The Dragon is doing what others have always done, ruling over everyone else, controlling all resources, controlling all the people. There’s only a few of us left, but we’re still killing each other. Forming tribes. Hoarding resources. Hoarding knowledge. Not sharing.”

  Gerald didn’t answer, but he seemed tense every time Ray brought up the Dragon or the Dark Angels.

  “Have you reached out to other bunkers?” Ray asked. “You said there were other underground labs like this one.”

  “There’s no one left,” Gerald said.

  “What happened to the others here?” Ray pressed. “You said they turned. They died.”

  “Yeah. Some left at first. They wanted to get back to their families. Others turned. We . . . we had to kill some of them. We each swore that we would kill ourselves if we began to turn, but some of them, they couldn’t do it.”

  “What did you do with the dead?” Ray asked. He’d smelled the slight odor of death and decay as soon as he had entered the bunker from the elevator, but he thought the smell would be much stronger if so many had died in here.

  “We took them outside,” Gerald said.

  “Wouldn’t the dead attract more rippers?” Ray asked.

  “Yeah. But they couldn’t get inside.”

  Ray didn’t believe Gerald. The man seemed honest at first about his explanations about the Ripper Plague, but he seemed different now.

  “You’re the last one left,” Ray said. “You took all of the bodies outside by yourself?”

  Gerald shook his head, stammering for an answer.

  A pinging sounded on the computer.

  “What’s that?” Ray asked.

  Gerald stared at him, hesitating.

  “What is it?” Ray said through gritted teeth.

  Gerald’s face collapsed in sorrow. He shook his head. “It’s the cameras. Notifying me someone’s there.”

  “Someone’s there?” Josh said. “Who? Where are they?”

  “I’m sorry,” Gerald said. “The elevator’s coming down right now. They made me do it.”

  CHAPTER 46

  Kate

  The night had been hell. It had been cold and too dark to see anything. At one point it had rained, a freezing rain that left a coating of ice on the tent. It felt so much colder inside the tent than it had in the store, no block walls on the roof to block the wind and weather.

  Brooke cuddled up with Kate through the night, along with Tiger. She slept in fits, waking up every hour or so. Once she woke up screaming. Kate finally calmed her down and asked if she’d had a bad dream, but she claimed she couldn’t remember it. Kate had thought of asking Brooke right then why she wasn’t drawing anymore in her artist tablet, drawing the things she saw in her dreams. But she didn’t ask her.

  Maybe she didn’t want to know the answer.

  Kate hadn’t slept much through the night. She lay awake, shivering, listening to the constant roar of the mob of rippers below, ransacking the store, running in and out of the back of the store, trampling across the fallen fence, into and out of the woods all night. There were always some on guard at the edge of the roof, watching through the night vision goggles and using flashlights to spotlight the rippers. It didn’t matter if they used the lights or not—the rippers knew they were there.

  When Kate finally managed to fall asleep for a few minutes, she had terrible nightmares. The Dragon didn’t haunt her dreams; these nightmares were much more disorganized, just bits and pieces of the horrors she’d seen the past few weeks since all of this madness had started.

  Now it was morning, long past sunrise. Brooke had finally slept for a fe
w hours and Kate didn’t want to disturb her. She got up and crept out of the tent. Tiger opened his eyes, watching her. For a second she thought the cat was going to follow her, but he lay back down and closed his eyes.

  The freezing wind slammed into Kate when she stepped out of the tent, the fabric of the tent rippling. She pulled her hoodie around her tighter, shivering. She looked around. There were still a few spotters at the edge of the roof: two at the front of the store, two at the back. They had binoculars and rifles, but no one was shooting right now. Kate didn’t need to walk to the edge to see if the rippers were still active; she could hear them, and she could see them all over the front parking lot, across the street, at the partially constructed building and gas station at the intersection, in the woods, inside the fenced-in back area of the store.

  Other spotters—Lisa and Wade—stood guard at the skylight. Wade had his rifle in his hands, aimed down into the rectangular hole. She walked over to them. The noise of the rippers was louder when she got closer to the skylight, not only their cries and screeches, the primitive form of communication they used, but also the slamming and crashing of objects down below.

  When Kate got close enough to the edge, Lisa turned on her powerful flashlight without saying a word, revealing to Kate what was going on down below.

  Kate’s heart seemed to stop for a moment as she stared down at the store, at the crowd of rippers moving around in the light, crawling over each other like insects. They had been dragging empty shelving and other pieces of furniture under the skylight, next to the collapsed lift, stacking pieces on top of each other, some of the makeshift structures wobbly and unsafe, but they had formed a base to build from.

  “They’re trying to get up here,” Lisa said as if Kate had asked her a question.

  Kate just stared at the rippers below illuminated in the flashlight beam. They worked like mindless ants. But they weren’t totally mindless. They were relentless, building nonstop, trying to build a structure tall enough to reach the skylight, like some kind of twisted version of the Tower of Babel.